The founder of Amazon, who has just let go of the reins of the company, now has a personal fortune estimated at 211 billion dollars. A peak reached thanks to the jump in Amazon's share price on the stock market, while the Seattle firm can hope to land a giant contract for the Pentagon's cloud.
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| PHOTO JOHN LOCHER, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES |
The world's richest guy has never been so wealthy. According to Bloomberg's billionaires index, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' fortune hit $211 billion on Tuesday. After the Pentagon revealed Tuesday that it was terminating a cloud computing deal with rival Microsoft, Amazon's stock has risen.
The last record recorded by the Bloomberg index was in January, when Elon Musk had briefly exceeded the 210 billion mark. The founders of Tesla and Amazon were constantly exchanging the position of the world's largest fortune, but Jeff Bezos started to take the lead in mid-March, when Amazon's share price began a solid ascent. In less than four months, it has risen 20%.
A 10 billion dollar deal
Overall, the surge in stock prices in recent months benefits the leaders of large groups, including Elon Musk who remains second with $ 180.8 billion, followed by the French Bernard Arnault, boss of LVMH (owner of "Les Echos"), with $ 168.5 billion.
But on Tuesday, Jeff Bezos was able to widen the gap thanks to news from the Pentagon. The U.S. Department of Defense thus announced the reallocation of a contract for cloud computing of $ 10 billion, originally won in 2019 by Microsoft. A choice that had led to long months of wrangling between the government and the tech giants competing to win the tender.
The announcement putting Amazon back in the race, the group's share price rose 4.7% the same day. That's enough to swell Jeff Bezos' fortune by $8.4 billion. Even during a previous surge in Amazon's share price in 2020, its founder, who still holds 11% of the company, which he has just handed over to his right-hand man Andy Jassy, had seen his fortune reach "only" 206.9 billion.
Source: Bloomberg
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